This Beast of a Retro Dive Watch Is Finally Available in Steel

The major watchmaking milestones of 1969 with 50-year anniversaries in 2019 overshadowed some other cool watches from the same prolific year. Doxa did its best to stand out by giving its 1969 Sub 200 T-Graph a little birthday celebration in the form of a solid gold reissue at Baselworld, even if it was a little out of character for the maker of sporty tool watches. Now, Doxa follows up with the steel versions that the brand’s traditional fanbase expected and can more easily appreciate.

High-end anniversary editions to generate buzz followed by more affordable standard editions are a common watch industry practice. The Doxa Sub 200 T-Graph in steel, however, is being produced in only 300 pieces, following the brand’s business model of annual limited editions. It faithfully reprises the 1969 model, a sought-after item on the vintage market today.

At 43mm wide by 14mm thick, this was a pretty huge watch back in the day, and the 2019 version maintains those measurements. The brand signatures of bright orange dial (unique to the Professional range) and distinctive bezel design make it unmistakably Doxa. The bezel, as found on many of the brand’s watches, features a dive table for calculating decompression times. Naturally, the Sub 200 T-Graph is rated water-resistant to 200m.

One of the most interesting parts of the new Doxa Sub 200 T-Graph is its movement, which is a new-old stock (NOS) Valjoux 7734 manually wound chronograph movement. New-old stock means that it was produced decades ago but is unused, usually having remained in storage. The 7734 features a power reserve of 45 hours, operating at a relatively slow frequency of 2.5Hz, and it measures intervals of up to 30 minutes. While the original Sub 200 T-Graph used a column-wheel-equipped 310-82 movement from Doxa’s sister brand Eberhard, the 7734 is from the same era and an interesting touch to make the Sub 200 T-Graph feel a little more special.

On a very cool and very Doxa beads-of-rice bracelet, the Sub 200 T-Graph is limited to only 300 pieces with a price of $4,900 each.